The Watchmen - Hardcover

Altman, John

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0399151737 ISBN 13: 9780399151736

Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2004

Synopsis

Assigned to question an Al Qaeda prisoner whose cooperative nature seems too good to be true, reluctant psychiatrist Louis Finney suffers from nightmares for his part in experiments to induce multiple personalities and finds his assignment challenged by an assassin who would kill the prisoner before he reveals terrorist secrets. 20,000 first printing.

About this title

About the Author:

John Altman comes from an extended family of writers. His previous books are A Gathering of Spies, A Game of Spies, and Deception.

From Publishers Weekly:

When captured al-Qaeda operative Ali Zattout proves less than forthcoming with his CIA interrogators, they subject him to the manipulations of regretful psychiatrist Louis Finney, who tries everything from mellow conversation to electroshock-induced "de-patterning" and "psychic driving." Meanwhile, Zattout is being stalked by a nameless assassin, alumnus of an Asian temple cult of assassins, whose hypno-meditative regimen makes him so stealthily lethal that he is shudderingly referred to as the "ghost wind." Altman (A Gathering of Spies) excels at taut psychological confrontations, engrossing procedural and nerve-wracking action set pieces, replete with the theory and practice of mind control, interrogation techniques, cryptanalysis and murder. But the intrigue and mayhem spring from recognizable human motives. Like the Americans here, Altman's terrorists have affecting backstories and a sense of duty and payback that explains their acts, and they feel misgivings at the brutality they inflict. Orientalist clichés are off-loaded onto the assassin, a representative of the "True East," whose violence, unlike that of Muslims and Westerners, is not a tragic product of ideology and history but a mystic pathway to enlightenment, though even he is plagued by doubts and depression. Altman's blend of suspense, action, psychological depth and moral murk makes this a wonderful espionage thriller for a Code Orange age.
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About this edition

• Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0399151737
• ISBN 13: 9780399151736
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272